ICEBREAKER

The Tipping Point

In his book "The Tipping Point" Malcolm Gladwell describes the problems associated with making change.

1. What do you believe are the major issues associated with introducing technological change in your institution?

2. What strategies do you believe would be most effective for crossing the Tipping Point?

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Blogs and Wikis at IBM

This extract from the report "Social Networking at IBM", Tom Werner, June 19, 2007 indicates that IBM has crossed the Tipping Point.
o Some 26,000 IBM workers have registered blogs.
o IBM has more than 20,000 wikis with more than 100,000 users.
o Any employee can have a blog, a wiki, or a podcast.
o No one is allowed to be anonymous online at IBM. This minimizes inappropriate behavior. Employees are expected to act online according IBM’s code of conduct.
o IBM employees use a social bookmarking program called DogEar.
o IBM has a MySpace-like social network called BluePages. BluePages lists employee-controlled profiles of 400,000 full- and part-time employees. Only thumb-nail photos are permitted and pages cannot play songs.
o IBM has a daily online newsletter called w3. Employees rank headlines in the newsletter by tagging and highly-ranked stories appear first. Each tag is linked back to the tagger’s BluePages profile, and clicking on the tagger’s name lets a user send the person an IM
o IBM owns more than 50 islands in Second Life. Orientations, classes, and meetings are often held in Second Life.
IBM is clearly moving very aggressively to adopt Web 2.0 tools for internal use.

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